Furthermore, I should like to show that the question of bases continuously comes up in enemy navies without reference to...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kranzbühler, you are going a little bit fast over these documents and I am not quite sure that I am quite following what use you are making of them. This base mentioned in the report is Murmansk?
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Yes; Murmansk. And I want to use it as proof, Mr. President, that the question of bases has nothing to do with the question of whether one wants to wage aggressive war with the country in which these bases are situated. The considerations as to Murmansk were taken in full accord with the Soviet Union, and in the same manner Admiral Dönitz took the question of Norwegian bases into consideration. That is the subject of my proof.
THE PRESIDENT: But the fact that Murmansk was suggested as a base, to be taken with the consent of the Soviet Union—if it was the case—doesn’t have any relevance, does it, to taking a base in Norway without the consent of Norway.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Mr. President, the relevancy seems to me to exist in the fact that Admiral Dönitz, as Commander of U-boats, in both cases received merely the order to state his opinion about bases in a certain country but that in the last analysis he had as little to say in the case of Narvik and Trondheim as in the case of Murmansk.
COLONEL Y. V. POKROVSKY (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the U. S. S. R.): In Document Number 3, the one just being referred to by the defense counsel for the Defendant Dönitz, mention is definitely made of the northern bases; but nothing is said in this document of any plans of the Soviet Union. And to discuss, here and now, some plan or other of the Soviet Union is in my opinion quite out of order, since there are no plans of the Soviet Union in connection with the northern bases, and there never have been.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: If the representative of the Soviet Union has any doubts that these bases were considered in full accord with the Soviet Union, then I shall prove that by calling a witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Anyhow, the document doesn’t say anything about it.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: The document says nothing about it.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal doesn’t think you ought to make statements of that sort without any evidence; and at the moment you are dealing with a document which doesn’t contain any evidence of the fact.